Changing Snow Tires or: How I Learned to Love Mechanics Gloves

It’s that exciting time of year when the days are getting longer, the Jon Snow memes are packed away and the landscape is thawing. This means one thing:

It’s Time To Change Your Snow Tires!

When the weather is consistently over 44°F (7°C), it’s time to switch your snow tires for all-season ones.

My weekend goal was to change over the tires on two cars.

Since working at Superior Glove, I’ve become very aware of my hands, so I knew this would be a perfect opportunity to test out some gloves.

But what type?

It seemed like the perfect opportunity to decide on the ultimate tire gloves.

A fictional representation of how happy I was while changing tires.

The Palm-Coated Option:

I started out by wearing one of my favorite gloves, the STAGBPU. It has high cut resistance, excellent grip and tactile feel.

This glove would be great if I could have found my pneumatic air gun.

The polyurethane palm coating was perfect for holding onto lug nuts and gripping the tires. But, since I couldn’t find my air gun, I ended up hand cracking the nuts with a lug wrench.

That means that the polyurethane palm coating left something to be desired for abrasion resistance.

After replacing the first two tires, I could feel the skin at the top of my palm beginning to burn.

But not wanting to waste time, I pressed on.

By the time I finished replacing the tires on the first vehicle, I’d decided to find another option.

These gloves were not the ultimate tire gloves.

“Hey air gun, this could be us but you hidin’.”

The Leather Split-Fitter Option:

Not having any Superior Glove-made leather split-fitter gloves, I took an old pair used for piling wood that I bought at the local hardware store.

After switching to the leather gloves, my hands felt instant relief.

These gloves had enough padding on the palm to protect my hands from friction burn caused by the wrench. It also allowed me to work faster.

The trouble came when I began taking the lug nuts off the bolt.

The fingertip bulk made it difficult to grip the nuts. While it wasn’t impossible, it was time consuming.

Leather split-fitter gloves were nearly the ultimate tire gloves.

Side note: Notice the split seam in the picture above. Generic big-box store gloves are designed to be cheap, not long lasting. A manufacturer who specializes in gloves would know to move that seam to the back of the hand, where it wouldn’t split as easily, like the Crewmate® Split-Fitter Glove below. To further increase the seam integrity, these gloves are sewn with Kevlar® yarn.

Mechanics Glove:

I could have worn the split-fitters gloves to complete my goal of changing tires, but I wouldn’t have accomplished my goal of finding the ultimate tire gloves.